Psychological, situational, and gender predictors of cardiovascular reactivity to stress: A multivariate approach

Abstract

This study examined whether relationships between anger expression, hostility, social evaluative anxiety, and a presumed mechanism for coronary heart disease development, cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stress, are moderated by stress situation and gender and whether such relationships are attenuated by inadequate assessments. Subjects (47 men, 47 women) were assigned randomly to either a Harassment or a Social Evaluation condition, under which they performed a reaction time task. SBP, DBP, and HR measures were recorded during baseline and task. Multiple regression analyses indicated that expressed anger was related to CVR only among men in the Harassment condition; that hostile men who express anger showed the most CVR across situations, and that the traits assessed here did not predict CVR among women. Results suggest that assessments of coronary-risk and interventions to reduce risk may need to take into account attitudes, styles of emotional expression, environmental factors, and gender.

Hostility and anger expression behavioral and cardiovascular responses to mental stress among cardiovascular disease patients

“…This study, like others, notes the importance of anger or stressprovoking situations (e.g. Burns, 1995;Burns & Katkin, 1993;Suarez & Williams, 1990) to elicit the differential CVR responding, highlighting that repression effects are most apparent when social evaluative cues are pronounced (e.g. Newton & Contrada, 1992).…”

Interactive effects of traits, states, and gender on cardiovascular reactivity during different situations

“…Evidence indeed supports this notion. Findings show that individuals characterized by anger-hostility tend to show greater CVR during interpersonal harassment than during stress tasks which do not feature such anger-provocation (Burns and Katkin, 1993;Engebretson et aL, 1989;Hardy and Smith, 1988;Williams, 1989, 1990). Trait x situation interactions also may be pertinent for links between traits of anxiety and CVR to stress.…”

“…Individuals high and low on traits have been subjected to Manipulation versus Control conditions (e.g., Suarez and Williams, 1989) or Manipulation versus Manipulation conditions (e.g., Burns and Katkin, 1993); both alternatives have provided only limited comparisons of associations between traits and CVR across various situations. The present study expanded the investigation of the trait • situation ap-proach by employing two distinct manipulations and a control condition.…”

Early pulmonary response to allergen is attenuated during acute emotional stress in females with asthma

“…Females alone were chosen because males and females vary in terms of the types of stimuli that they respond to as stressors in terms of life events [9] and experimental challenges [10]. They also have different psychosocial [9] and physiological [10] responses to the same stressors and it is believed that the integrity of their stress responses is not associated with the same personality variables [11][12]. In addition, in the w20 yrs-of-age category, females appear to be at greater risk from asthma, since they report For editorial comments see page 574.…”